Category: Rants

Juneathon Day 27 – Warning: Contains A Bit Of Swearing

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This is what I posted on the Juneathon Facebook Page this morning:

Juneathon Facebook page screenshot

The clean version

When I said ‘scuppered’, what I really meant (and what David was referring to) was this:

Facebook status update screenshot

The slightly more Tourettes version

 

Yes, parkrun fucking well fucked up my fucking challenge that I’d been fucking looking forward to for fucking weeks.

*Non-sweary bit*

In case you don’t know what my challenge was, I’d challenged myself to run my local parkrun at 9am, then get to the gym in time to do a spin class at 10am. Although there are only two miles between the park and gym, given how slow I am at a) running; and b) cycling, an hour – although not impossible – would be cutting it fine but, as long as the parkrun started on time, my challenge would be completed successfully and I could spend the rest of Saturday walking around saying things like, ‘yay, go me and my successfully completed challenges’.

*End of non-sweary bit*

But, did it start on time? OF COURSE IT FUCKING DIDN’T. I got to the park with plenty of time to spare but the introductory talk thing didn’t start until 9:05 and instead of just getting on with it and starting the run, the bloke started doing the crappy clapping everyone thing and so I thought fuck it, this is going to go on for at least another five minutes, I’m going to the gym, as I don’t want to miss spin and so I fucked off from the stupid fucking parkrun and went to the gym and went on the rowing machine and treadmill instead before going to spin.

Stupid fucking parkrun fucking up my fucking challenge.

Bah.

Stats

Running: 0 miles because stupid fucking parkrun
Challenges completed successfully: 0 because stupid fucking parkrun
Cycling: 4 pointless miles because stupid fucking parkrun
Rowing machine: 15 minutes because stupid fucking parkrun
Treadmill: 15 minutes because stupid fucking parkrun
Spin: 45 minutes. Yay for spin

Dear Countryside, please look up the definition of ‘path’.

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The sun was up, the sky was blue, it was beautiful and so was I, and when I stopped paraphrasing Siouxsie and the Banshees (not a Beatles fan, sorry), I decided to go running over the fields.

As soon as I started lumbering running, my tooth started to hurt and it reminded me of the time I was at work and a girl there said ‘there’s nothing worse than toothache’ and when I replied with ‘people with cancer might disagree with you’ was met with a blank look as she swiftly turned round and carried on the usual bunch-of-women-in-an-office conversation about husbands, kids, food shopping and X-Factor and then I went through the first field and over the stile and in the next field standing by the gate were a load of sheep and most of them gaily skipped through the gate except for this one sheep who just stood there and so I stopped and he took a step forward and I thought he was going to go through the gate and I could follow him and so I took a step forward but then he stopped to let me go first and so I stopped to let him go first instead and it ended up in a ‘no, you go first’, ‘no YOU go first’ typically British situation and I didn’t really want to end up in a side-to-side dance on the pavement thing with a sheep and so I went through the gate first and he followed me through and I got to the next field and oh fuck, like this time last year, the farmer had furrowed his field again and I thought to myself, if there’s a sign that says ‘footpath’ the least it could do is have a fucking path on the other side of it and not twenty acres of mud and so I trudged through the mud in the general direction I thought the next stile was but I couldn’t see it and when I got over the next little bridge the next field was also all mud and I wasn’t happy and I turned round and I didn’t want to do a Plan B run as I was pissed off by then and just wanted to go back but I didn’t go back the way I came, but did a little detour along the road and as I went down the nice downhill open stretch bit there was a learner driver stopped in the road and the cars couldn’t get around it and I rubbernecked while I went past to see what was up with the driver and briefly pondered if I should stop and pretend to do my laces up so I could get a proper look but there didn’t seem to be anything up with her and she was just sitting there and not thumping her fists frustratedly on the steering wheel like I would have been if I had forgotten where the go-forward-and-stop-holding-up-the-traffic-behind-you-pedal was and I carried on running down the hill and I got home severely pissed off that my training run was scuppered by the field full of mud.

Vivisectionists need not apply

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You all know I’m a veggie. If you’re a friend of mine on Facebook or are following me on Twitter, you’ve probably seen me ranting about Race for Life and Cancer Research UK. Cancer Research UK are vivisectionists. If you raise any money for them, you are funding animal experimentation.

So stop it.

Run as many Race for Lifes as you like, I don’t care. I’ve done a few of them myself. The race entry only goes towards directors’ salaries, admin fees and those tacky medals you get at the end. My conscience got the better of me eventually and now my efforts no longer go on running approximately 5k whilst dodging a load of pink-angel-wing-wearing fat women walking really slowly, but towards letting everyone know how much I hate Cancer Research UK.

There are alternative cancer charities. Lots of them. If you have a look at this list, you’ll find them. This list will also let you know if your chosen charity is an ethical one or not. If not, choose one that is.

And PR/marketing people, if you’re emailing me to ask if I’ll promote a charity that conducts or funds animal testing, do one.

£15 for 1.5 miles? I don’t think so

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Maidstone-fun-run I was in the library yesterday picking up a copy of The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie (not my choice, someone picked it for this month’s book club, bah) and on the way out I spotted a leaflet advertising a Santa fun run in Maidstone and so I thought, cool, a local race, hurrah.  But as I was walking down the street taking a better look at it, I saw it said it’s only 2.5k which is crappy enough but then I saw the entry price.  £15!!!  To run 1.5 miles?  Are they taking the piss or what?  In fact, I think they are taking the piss as it says entry is “just” £15, like it’s a bargain or something.  Flipping heck.  And it’s the same price for kids too.  It’d take longer to put the santa suit on than to run the race.

I did a Santa fun run last year in Dagenham where we got a santa suit and a medal and I’m pretty sure that was only about £7 for a 5k race.  Far better value.

Name and shame: CIS (Co-operative Insurance Services)

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Since the age of about 30, I have tried to be a responsible, law-abiding citizen (yes, ok, so I’m a late developer to the responsible, law-abiding citizen thing) and so I ring my mortgage company to tell them I’m moving and putting tenants in my house and do I need to inform them? and the man on the phone says yes, you need our consent and it will cost you £225 and you also need to change your insurance to a landlord policy.  So I ring up my insurance company and say hello, I’m moving house and putting tenants in and need to change my policy.  I’m asked for the policy number of the insurance of where I’m moving to.  Huh? I want to change the policy of where I’m moving from, not to.  Woman on the phone says I need to have my insurance with them at the place I’m moving to if I want to have landlord insurance on my current property.  Huh?  Can you say that again please?  She repeats what she just said and I say but it’s not my property, the insurance there is nothing to do with me, I just want to change the insurance on my property.  She says I can’t, unless where I’m moving to is insured with them.  But it’s not my property.  She says it doesn’t matter, you have to have insurance with us at your main residential address if you want our insurance on another property you own.  BUT THAT’S CRAZY I say.  She says that’s their policy.  I say well I’m going to have to cancel my insurance with you then.  She says yes I will, and she’ll cancel it from now.  BUT YOU CAN’T CANCEL IT FROM NOW, I STILL LIVE THERE I say.  She says ok, when do you want to cancel it from?  I say I’ll call you back.  I phone my bank and say can I have some landlord insurance please and the nice man says yes you can and it sounds like a pretty reasonable price too so I get my insurance with them and phone the crappy CIS or The Co-operative Insurance or whatever they’re called now and say stick your insurance up your arse you idiots.

Stats:
Insurance companies who are idiots: 1
Nice banks who gave me insurance: 1
Blog posts about running: 0

 

Reading Half Marathon 2009 training

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Although my training regime for the Royal Parks Half Marathon consisted of only doing a maximum of 7 miles and drinking a bottle and a half of wine the night before resulted in me finishing only 5 minutes slower than the Roding Valley Half Marathon which I did train for properly, doing 12 miles in training and drinking nothing stronger than water the night before, I decide that this time I will train properly(ish) and print off the Hal Higdon’s novice half marathon training program and I print off the novice one instead of the intermediate one as the intermediate one has all that confusing 5 x 400 5k pace stuff on it and I don’t have a 5k pace, I just have a pace, a slow one, and the novice one has less confusing stuff on it like run 4 miles on Sunday and I decide to be a rebel and switch Sunday for Saturday as I don’t think Hal Higdon would really care and anyway he looks too old and feeble to come after me and tell me off or give me a scary face look or something and I go and put my new Asics Cumulus 9s on which are the same as my old shoes which I got for the bargain price of £35 from Start Fitness

Asics Cumulus 9

and because they were such a bargain price I got myself a new running top too.

Adidas running top

And I head off on day 1 training for the half marathon that all the cool people are doing, i.e. me, Shaun, The Red Bucket, irunbecauseilovefood, Sore Limbs, Mrs Sore Limbs, my web designer friend Boris (er, about time you updated your blog, eh Boris?) and our mountain mate Leighsa and I get to the marina and a girl passes me and smiles and says hello and I say hello back and then I’m over the bridge and the cows have been moved but they’re miles away and a group of six runners are coming up towards me and taking up the whole path and I think uh oh, are they going to move and let me get past? and they do move and I think that’s nice and polite and more polite than people who steal blogs and if you look far down below at the end of the page, you’ll see a copyright notice that most of you won’t need to concern yourselves with as you are nice people who won’t steal my blog but one of you out there, and you know who you are, but if you don’t here’s a clue – you have the words “road” and “running” in your blog title, STOLE MY BLOG and republished it to make it look like his own and when confronted with oi, why did you steal my blog? (hmm, could work on my tact a bit more perhaps), instead of saying I’m sorry Miss JogBlog, Your Royal Highness, but because your blog is the bestest blog in the whole wide world, I thought that if I ripped off your content and made it look like it was my blog it would make me more attractive to the opposite sex and maybe I’d get a shag, I was told that it wasn’t stolen but he had just taken the feed.  WHAT THE FUCK?!!  Taking someone’s content and republishing it to make it look like your own to make money on the back of it isn’t stealing?  Listen, go back and re-read ProBlogger, then come back and tell me where it says it’s ok to steal someone’s blog.  Although I can save you the bother.  It doesn’t say that.  Anywhere.

Splits

Splits 20 December 2008

Stats:
 Distance: 4.16 miles
Time: 44:27 minutes
Pace: 10:41
Calories: 382
New pairs of shoes for a bargain price: 1
New running tops: 1
Blogstealers: 1
Music:
Cardiacs
Jeff Buckley
Manic Street Preachers
Auf Der Maur
Calvin Harris
The The
Adam & The Ants

Name and shame: Spam

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Today I was busily checking my personal email at work (woo hoo, I found a webmail site they haven’t blocked.  Yet.) and sitting in my inbox was a WordPress notification letting me know that someone had commented on a post.  Hurrah, thought I.  But alas, it wasn’t a comment from an adoring fan, it was a comment from a dirty spammer.  Boo hiss.  Someone calling themselves Running Shoes London left a comment about how expensive running shoes are but don’t they fit well and they’d bought some last year and are really comfy.

Hmm, I wonder if these expensive, well fitting and really comfy shoes are from The Jog Shop, which is where the link led to?  Surely not.

I replied to let them know I deleted their comment due to it being blatant spam (couldn’t they even at least try to disguise it?) but if they’d like to get in touch with me, I’ll let them know my rates for a text link or advertising space.

They didn’t reply.  Funny that.

Things that annoy me (part 1)

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It will be of no surprise to find out that, after I started a list of “things that annoyed me today”, on yesterday morning’s train to work, by the time I got home (via the pub) it resulted in quite a long list.  So instead of listing them all at once, this is no. 1 in a series of, um, quite a lot (Shaun, stop worrying, you’re not on the list.  Yet.)

Lunchtime, 1pm, in the gymLucozade Sport

I get to the gym and there’s a sign that says “Buy a course of 10 Lucozades and save £2”.  What the fuck, a course of Lucozades?  Since when did Lucozade come in courses?  Do we now go to the doctor and say “excuse me Mr Doctor but I have a bit of a sniffle, what would you recommend, those usual red and white capsule things you give out for everything?”  And he says “oh no, that was in the olden days, these days we give out a course of Lucozade; drink 10 bottles of these and you will rot your teeth, feel like shit, support the vivisection industry and spends loads of money for no reason  feel better immediately.  Well, after 10 bottles anyway”.  And if you’re really ill, you can get an even better deal:  “Buy a course of 20 Lucozades and get £4 off”.   I may have to stop going to the gym so I don’t have to see that sign anymore.